The Eye-Fi Wireless SD memory card helped to catch a camera thief in Florida last week when $1,000 worth of camera gear was stolen.

Photography enthusiast Alison DeLauzon was on holiday when her equipment was stolen, but later managed to catch a glimpse of the thief when the images from her card were sent to her home computer via the internet.

The Eye-Fi SD card, which had been given as a gift to Alison, works by automatically connecting to the internet when inserted into your camera and sends photos direct back to the user's computer. The thief had unwittingly sent the vacation shots back to Alison's computer when he passed by an unsecured network with settings matching those of her home system. Alongside her holiday snaps were images of the thief with the equipment he had stolen when Alison left her gear behind in a restaurant!

"I opened up the Eye-Fi manager on the computer and, lo and behold, there are the guys that stole our cameras," DeLauzon told Reuters.

After reporting the incident to police, the thief was consequently caught and charged.

This is not the first case of camera helping to catch a criminal. Last year, a Japanese man set up a hidden camera in his kitchen when food kept disappearing from his cupboards. The footage showed images of an unknown woman who had been living secretly in his closet!

Eye-Fi cards are available from $79.99. For more information please visit the website.

I would be interested in this if I could just use it to send pictures to my laptop whilst out shooting to save time downloading, but it appears you must have a router in line to do so, which unfortunately is miles away at home .
A major software update required I think before it catches on !!
They need to work out how to cut out the middleman !

I would be interested in this if I could just use it to send pictures to my laptop whilst out shooting to save time downloading, but it appears you must have a router in line to do so, which unfortunately is miles away at home .
A major software update required I think before it catches on !!
They need to work out how to cut out the middleman !